Gordon Fulks sends this summary of the situation and asks that it be distributed. I’m happy to oblige. For some background on Dr. Drapela’s skeptical views, this slideshow “Global Warming Cracked Open” might give some insight into OSU’s booting him out. – Anthony
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From Gordon Fulks:
Hello Everyone,
In theory at least Oregon State University (OSU) seems to be a bastion of academic freedom, diversity, and tolerance. A wide range of ideas are openly discussed. The most viable rise to the top and the least viable fade away. But it is all a fairy tale, because OSU operates under a politically correct regimen that dictates what is acceptable to say and what is not. Transgressors who dare to be different are eventually weeded out so that the campus maintains its ideological purity.
OSU is not yet as swift or efficient as the Soviet system when Joseph Stalin was trying to quash dissent among biologists who refused to go along with Trofim Lysenko. If warnings to compromise their integrity were not followed, Stalin simply had biologists shot. That quickly thinned the ranks of all biologists and persuaded the remaining ones to comply with Stalin’s wishes. Of course, it also destroyed Soviet biology, because Lysenko was pedaling nonsense. And Russian biology has never recovered.
We learned over the weekend that chemist Nickolas Drapela, PhD has been summarily fired from his position as a “Senior Instructor” in the Department of Chemistry. The department chairman Richard Carter told him that he was fired but would not provide any reason. Subsequent attempts to extract a reason from the OSU administration have been stonewalled. Drapela appears to have been highly competent and well-liked by his students. Some have even taken up the fight to have him reinstated.
What could possibly have provoked the OSU administration to take precipitous action against one of their academics who has been on their staff for ten years, just bought a house in Corvallis, and has four young children (one with severe medical problems)? Dr. Drapela is an outspoken critic of the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, the official religion of the State of Oregon, the Oregon Democratic Party, and Governor John Kitzhaber.
Five years ago, Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor went around quietly saying that he was not a believer. Then Governor Ted Kulongoski and many faculty at OSU including Dr. Jane Lubchenco made life impossible for Taylor, and he retired. (Lubchenco is now head of NOAA in the Obama administration.) Under those currently in charge, OSU climate research has grown to be a huge business, reportedly $90 million per year with no real deliverables beyond solid academic support for climate hysteria. A small army of researchers ponder the effects of Global Warming on all sorts of things from tube worms living along the Oregon Coast to butterflies inland. When the climate refuses to warm (as it has for the last twenty years), they just study ‘warming in reverse!’ Most of us call that “cooling,” but they are very careful not to upset their Obama administration contract monitors with politically incorrect terminology.
Skeptics of Global Warming who oppose the OSU approach and oppose the politicians who make it all possible but do not work for OSU also find themselves attacked. Dr. Art Robinson who is running against Peter DeFazio for an Oregon Congressional seat found three of his children under attack at OSU. All were attempting to obtain advanced degrees in the Nuclear Engineering Department and were threatened with dismissal. Because Robinson fought back, we understand that the OSU administration backed down.
As to the latest victim of political correctness at OSU, Dr. Nickolas Drapela gives us an excellent synopsis of what is going on:
“The fact of the matter is that it is now two weeks since I was fired and no one has had the cajones or the common courtesy to even tell me why. I have spoken with the Dept. Chair (Rich Carter) who fired me, and he refused to tell me why. I spoke to the Dean of Science (Vince Remcho) and he couldn’t tell me why. I spoke to HR who set up a meeting with me, then cancelled it an hour before. Then I went to the Vice President of Academic Affairs (Becky Warner) and she sent me back to Rich Carter, the chemistry chair.
It’s just a sad, sad state of affairs that an institution like OSU would fire a good employee for (ostensibly) no reason and then run around and hide from the person they fired. I had stellar teaching evaluations, I won College of Science awards for teaching, and published textbooks. My class sections were always full and I was well-liked by students (see ratemyprofessors.com). I was doing my job very well. But I guess I didn’t march in step with their philosophies.
There were quite a few student protests over this at OSU (Barometer, Facebook, etc.) but to no avail.
I was given no severance and had no warning this was about to happen. In fact, I was lured into the chair’s office under the guise of a fallacious story before being fired.
As you know, I was probably the most visibly-outspoken critic of the Global Warming doctrine at OSU. I gave several public talks on the topic and did research in the area which I regularly posted on the web. I was also on a few talk radio shows in the area. I think they finally just said, we can’t have this.
Can it be that a university whose motto is “Open minds. Open doors” cannot abide even one faculty member who disagrees with their dogma? I suppose I am too naive, but I’m still reeling from it. Unbelievable.
I should say that they regularly read all my email communications, which is why I am writing from this private email address. That has been going on for quite some time now.
As far as my options at this point, like I said I haven’t even really grasped what has just happened. I don’t know what I’m going to do, or what options I have yet. I’m sure OSU wants their story to be tight and perfectly identical among all administration before coming out with an official reason why I was fired, hence the long wait and refusal to speak to me.
I truly thank you for your concern, and I hope there is some recourse, even just for the sake of exposing what is happening at OSU.”
In a separate e-mail Drapela went on to say:
“Thanks so much for your support and your concern. That’s really nice. My students were all really upset about it. They started an email writing campaign to have me re-hired but I guess no one cares what they think.
I find that the people who want to keep things secret all the time are usually the people that have something to hide. It is certainly ok by me for you to disseminate this story. But I’m sure OSU would be horrified.
I’m not sure how I will support my family at this point. We just bought a house in Corvallis. I have four kids, one of whom has a rare, blood disorder and requires regular trips to Doernbecher’s Children’s Hospital for treatment. Now we will be without health insurance.”
We can only speculate as to how the decision to fire Drapela was made. Unlike the decision to force Taylor out (which came from the governor’s office), this decision was likely internal to OSU with the implicit backing of Governor Kitzhaber and NOAA administrator Lubchenco. I would suspect that Dr. Phil Mote (Director of their Climate Change Research Institute) had a hand in the decision, because he has previously been highly intolerant of those who oppose his ideas and could potentially threaten his business empire.
Please join with me in supporting Nick Drapela. Please join with me in supporting objective science, as well as academic freedom, diversity, and tolerance. The issues here go far beyond just Global Warming and strike at the very heart of who we are as scientists and Americans.
Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
P.S. Please circulate this e-mail far and wide. The world needs to know what is going on here.
As a graduate of OSU, I find the firing of an instructor appauling. I thought OSU didn’t play the politicaly correct game. I subsequently wrote the president of the OSU Foundation and informed him that I will be withdrawing my annual contriubutions until they come up with a valid reason why Dr. Drapela was fired. They can’t silence people like this!
I’m a graduate student at OSU and have been here for many years (almost done). There is no doubt that Dr. Drapela has made a serious effort to be a good instructor, and want’s to be well liked by the students. Perhaps he concentrated too much on that instead of maintaining a collegial relationship with the rest of the faculty. To the point: Dr. Drapela is not a researcher, he is an instructor. By projecting his theories of global warming as that of an official researcher at Oregon State, he has abused his affiliation with the high impact research that entire OSU community has striven to attain. This is nothing new, and he has been warned repeatedly; the biggest row nearly 5 years ago when he held an official “forum,” at OSU, without the sanction/knowledge/permission of the OSU faculty. As great of a teacher as he is, I believe that is replaceable. While he might like to paint himself as a martyr for dissenting opinions in the field, the fact remains that he was not hired as a researcher, and his insistence in using his position as a way to lend his theories credibility is to blame. It is always unfortunate when someone get fired from a position that they were good at and loved doing. In this case I believe he only has himself to blame for his dismissal and I believe the OSU community will be better off without an instructor who does not contribute to the field, other than what occurs in his own mind.
Would it be appropriate for the University to fire an instructor for being Gay? How about being republican? Or what about being a Catholic? If they didn’t believe in evolution? The point is that the university preaches a dogma of diversity and open minds. This is a direct and opposing force to that.
Fellow Beavers! This is unacceptable. I had Drapela as a teacher for my undergrad and I always considered him one of the best teachers i’ve ever had. WRITE YOUR UNIVERSITY! I have done so, along with many of my fellow alumni. Diversity and tolerance are all or nothing ideas.
I see the comments that defended OSU and that Nick was terminated based his teaching, not his views of global warming have been pulled down. This thread is nothing more that promotion of propaganda rather that the facts of the matter.
[Reply: See our policy page here. The comments in question, Mr. Black, were not “pulled down”, they were never approved because they contained defamatory and possibly libelous allegations which could not be verified. That is a policy violation. Your e-mail address is invalid. Two separate attempts to reach that address bounced back with “no account” messages. That is a policy violation. No further comments from this fake e-mail address will be accepted. You should also know, Mr. Black, that we will be notifying Portland State University that their servers are being used to post defamatory and libelous material on the internet. Have a nice day. -REP]
“Richard Mead says:
June 13, 2012 at 11:40 am
As a graduate of OSU, I find the firing of an instructor appauling. I thought OSU didn’t play the politicaly correct game. I subsequently wrote the president of the OSU Foundation and informed him that I will be withdrawing my annual contriubutions until they come up with a valid reason why Dr. Drapela was fired. They can’t silence people like this!”
Mr. Mead, I hope your comment was done in haste as three typos in such a short missive does not speak well of OSU (of which I am also an Alum). I am normally not a judge of comments based on spelling, but three is too much in such a short posting, especially with auto-spell checking in action.
As a student of OSU and having had Dr. Drapela for a few courses, I can tell you that this article is true to the last degree. He was a great professor and person. OSU is great in many ways, but this is an absolute disgrace, as was the dismissal of Dr. Eggerton a few years back. This administration is utterly corrupt.
KVAL news would like to help Dr. Drapela share his story. If anybody knows how to contact him, please let me know.
I am a concerned alumna and created a facebook page to help get the story out. I emailed several news outlets and people at the University. I can be reached through this page:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/473854819297542/members/?order=alphabetical&query=#!/groups/473854819297542/
This is a surprise? OSU should be investigated and ALL public funding should be halted until the investigation has been completed. At a minimum, this doesn’t pass the smell test for harassment and discrimination.
By the way “give it a rest”, you announcing that you’re a graduate of OSU reflects poorly on the Institution. Go back and read your post. Perhaps you should say you graduated from U of O.
Let me know if there will be protest on campus and at the state Capitol. My children were his students and loved him. I’m plain sick of tax payers dollars going to fund agendas. Students and instructors should be allowed to intelligently speak and examine all sides of issues – that’s what a scientist should do. The university should foster debate, intelligent argument, information about both sides of an issue and foremost, free-speech. This University decision smacks of social control. It’s time to stand up and protest because our freedoms have greatly eroded.
In order to attain a better understanding of past atmospheric temperatures, scientist must study the ocean. The ocean is key to acquiring past atmospheric data. Scientists are able to collect past temperature data through the ocean. The ocean and the atmosphere are tightly linked. Together they form the most dynamic part of the climate system. By studying the ocean, scientists are able to determine past ocean surface temperatures by collecting data on isotope ratios of marine organism remains in sediment at the bottom of the sea (“Environmental Effects of…” para. 3).
The following graph represents the surface temperatures in the Sargasso Sea, a 2 million square mile region of the Atlantic Ocean, as determined by isotope ratios of marine organism remains in sediment at the bottom of the sea. The horizontal line is the average temperature for this 3,000-year period (“Environmental Effects of…” para. 3).
As the diagram illustrates, over the past 3,000 years, the earth’s temperature has fluctuated within three degrees centigrade. Also, the highest temperature, as seen on this chart, was near the year 1,000 BC, which was long before humans began producing greenhouse gasses. This high temperature was caused naturally, not by humans burning fossil fuels. The reason scientists have seen a recent increase of the earth’s temperature is because of the ‘little ice age,’ that occurred in the late 1700’s. The earth is recovering from the coldest period it has experienced in 1,500 years.
A recent NASA study may provide some new information on why the human produced greenhouse gasses are not destroying the planet. During the past ten years, NASA has been collecting atmospheric data from their Terra satellite. Their data shows that when the earth heats up, the atmosphere is able to channel energy and gasses out into space much better than they had previously believed. James M. Taylor from the Heartland Institute states,
In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth’s atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth’s atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space that the alarmist computer models predict. (Hubbard, para. 5)
As new research data is collected, there are many scientists who are recanting their claims of global warming. James Lovelock, a leading environmentalist, wrote several books concerning the drastic consequences of global warming. In 2006 Lovelock wrote, “Before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” (Lovelock, para. 7) However in a recent interview in April of 2012, Lovelock stated,
The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened. The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now.
The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that. (Johnston, para 8)
An Inconvenient Truth could be likened to a 21st century version of Chicken Little’s claim that the “Sky is falling!” The experts in Gore’s film announced a hasty verdict on the issue of Global Warming, when they failed to have enough information. As scientists gather more and more data, many specialists are discovering that what they originally said to be ‘human induced global warming,’ is nothing more than the natural process of the earth. Scientist collected data in a one-hundred year time span, which is a relatively brief time considering the age of the earth. The earth’s temperature has naturally fluctuated throughout history, and it will continue to do so in the future.
So Give It A Rest @ur momisugly “While he might like to paint himself as a martyr for dissenting opinions in the field, the fact remains that he was not hired as a researcher, and his insistence in using his position as a way to lend his theories credibility is to blame. It is always unfortunate when someone get fired from a position that they were good at and loved doing”.
You state:
1. Dr Drapela was a good teacher – [fact} this is generally confirmed by alumni on this thread. So no dispute about Dr. Drapela’s competence and professional skill.
2. Only “researchers” can expound, advocate and discuss scientific “theories” in their employment at a university – [premise].
3. Teachers cannot expound, advocate and discuss scientific “theories” in their employment at a university – [premise].
4. Dr Drapela was employed as teacher at OSU -[fact]
5. It is impermissible for Dr Drapela to “expound, advocate and discuss scientific “theories” in their employment at a university” – [conclusion].
6. Dr Draela was morally and legally validly dismissed from his teaching position – [conclusion].
Now one of the most iomportant legal principles is consistency and certainty of application of ratio and precedent. Now lets apply your premises and conclusions regarding Dr Drapela in a consistent and non-dicriminatory manner to all teachers of science at US tertiary institutions.
You reckon?
Is it legal to fire someone without a reason….this is crazy!! I would fight this………
ElmerF: I am normally not a judge of comments based on spelling, but three is too much in such a short posting, especially with auto-spell checking in action.
Elmer, others have pointed out that correcting writing mechanics invariably invokes some perverse law of karma that rebounds on the editor. Hence, we read:
As a graduate of OSU, I find the firing of an instructor appauling.
It’ll get you every time. I speak from sad experience. And I will re-read this VERY carefully. As will my wife.
: > )
Liam says:
June 13, 2012 at 7:41 am
Why has the US so many obese, smoking, health advice denialist, oil-guzzling, gun-toting, climate change skeptic, young Earth creationists??
We won the coin toss.
He was sleeping with a student. Thats why they fired him….and why they won’t tell anybody.
[Reply: Verifiable evidence, please. ~ dbs mod.]
The Stalin claims were uncesscary. Plus, the whole “Russian biology has never recovered” is just nonsense. If the Russians were so stupid, then they wouldn’t have launched the first satellite!
To be really honest, all the Stalin and Hitler stuff really doesn’t belong in the skeptic community.
Plus, the whole “Stalin as villain” thing is REALLY old. Indeed, he was such a “tyrant” that the USSR won the Second World War. Hmm. Look, I don’t mean to push buttons, but I really am tired of seeing the Soviet connections when no one really has a clue about Sovietology.
Rachel, Oh you can be sure if he were “sleeping with a student” that they would have no problem telling that…. Left some slander smears on your face.
He wasn’t fired. His contract was just not renewed, every year it must be renewed or he is out of a job, its not like this is a surprise. People are getting all up in arms about this but they honestly have no idea what they are talking about………..
Doesn’t anyone here question the authenticity of this information and wonder if perhaps, this individual did not have his contract renewed due to perfectly legitimate reasons, but because they are personnel issues, no one in the department or university is at liberty to discuss them in a public forum? Universities have grievance procedures, and this indivdual can follow them, and beyond that, there is the legal system. I read all of these fanatical responses that jump to wild conclusions and wonder who all of you crazy people are! Do you believe everything you read on a blog?!
I was just reading comments on the FB page that has been created by “concerned beavers” to “help” with Drapela’s cause. Everyone who is running around “helping” him is probably ensuring that no other university or college will hire him in the future. You are not saving his reputation – you are ruining it! The university has to have a paper trail of performance evaluations before a non-renewal can occur, so the answers are there but are not for the public to see. (And I am sure Drapela would not appreciate it if the university made them public.) Come on.
Penelope Willis @ur momisugly “He wasn’t fired. His contract was just not renewed, every year it must be renewed or he is out of a job, its not like this is a surprise. People are getting all up in arms about this but they honestly have no idea what they are talking about”
Not as simple as that. If an employee has a number of consequitive fixed term contract renewals that can constitute or be deemed a continuous contract.
So not necessarily the case that the non-renewal of a fixed term contract cannot constitute a dismissal. Try harder. Slander, trite law and innuendo. What a despicable pile of **** the alarmist cabal is in US universities.
>Can it be that a university whose motto is “Open minds. Open doors” cannot abide even one faculty member who disagrees with their dogma?
Okay, because let’s drag the whole uni down for one department’s actions.
I applaud the university – thinking is dangerous particularly when it contradicts accepted government policy. If this is allowed to take root others may try-
Another way a University can limit deviant thinking is to simply restrict funding sources for grants.
Back in 2007 the U. of Alberta was considering the option of forbidding its researchers from taking any grants from sources connected with the tobacco industry. I wrote a rather strong letter attacking such restrictions on academic freedom:
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/letters/story.html?id=4a64c2d9-4da5-4420-b50b-9e19a8229912
and was then immediately, and very unjustly, attacked for my “conflict of interest” in the completely volunteer work I do with the Smokers Club :
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/letters/story.html?id=4a64c2d9-4da5-4420-b50b-9e19a8229912
The original Alberta plan was just as “chilling” of academic freedom as the firing of professors such as James Entrom and Nickolas Drapela but is arguably far more dangerous as it is more subtle and more likely to spread throughout the entire research community.
– MJM